Have you ever wondered how hard it sometimes feels to change a negative habit or behaviour? Despite what you may think it is not due to a lack of will power or even motivation but due to one of our 6 basic human needs. If a need isn’t being met through positive or beneficial action it will be met through negative or detrimental action, sometimes even illegal. The first of our basic human needs is the need for certainty.
Never before has the world we live in been more uncertain. The pace of change has brought much progress and yet has also highlighted our need for certainty.
Most of us communicate via email and text and because of the immediacy of this communication we find ourselves expecting a response within a time-frame that feels comfortable to us. When no response is forthcoming within our desired time-frames we are left in a state of confusion and uncertainty. Has the email been read? Has it maybe gone into the recipient’s junk mail? Has something happened to the recipient? But the worst question many a sender has found themselves thinking is, am I being ignored? The pain of vulnerability that is created by our real discomfort with uncertainty is hard to bear; even worse is not knowing how to alleviate this pain because if we email again too soon we look desperate and needy and as if we have no control over our emotions.
To live without any uncertainty is unrealistic; we can’t predict the weather, world events, economies or even football results but perhaps the most painful uncertainty is not knowing if we are still part of our ‘tribe’. We belong to many tribes, our family, our friends, our colleagues, team members etc and the fear of having been ostracised dates back to primitive times when belonging to a tribe represented safety with people who we could identify with and understand.
When a change in habit (despite how beneficial that change would be) means no longer being part of one of our tribes (of smokers, or drug addicts for example), we can feel scared at the prospect of having to make our way through a world which can feel alien, lonely and full of uncertainty.
We are though all more accustomed to uncertainty than we might be aware of. Everything thing we have learnt has initially felt unfamiliar and uncertain; we practise new skills without any guarantee of success but we know that it is through consistent practice that we can transition from unskilled to skilled; not only are we practising and learning the new skill but also practising and learning how to become more comfortable with uncertainty and in the uncertain world we live in, that’s one of the most useful skills to learn.